Well, I've recently purchased an iPod Touch (8Gb model), and it looks dandy and such - however, there's nothing onboard but a simple instruction to connect to iTunes to update the nonexistent system. Right.

How would I go about doing this on Ubuntu? My laptop is the only machine I've access to, and iTunes failed to install under Wine/VirtualBox (which was a nightmare in itself trying to set up). Any tips, pointers?

Buy an MP3 player which isn't overpriced, severely restricted, and unreliable?

J/k, but you can probably find the necessary files available for manual download somewhere on the internet. Then again, Apple cling onto their software like grim death to avoid anything becoming open, so perhaps not.

I'm with you on that - Apple has draconian restrictions on their hardware, and though their overpriced (what an understatement) products are rather costly to sustain, it's lasted longer than any other DAP I've had. For instance, most of my Sansa players have died within weeks - my Gen 1 Nano has lasted for ages and battery life hasn't yet deprecated.

I've found a few manual updates (firmware 2.2 is all over the place, thankfully) though the device itself obscures its presence from my system - it prompts me to connect to iTunes, and does little else, with no disk-mode possible.

I've been using a Samsung YP-T10 for the last 2(ish) years, and it's still working perfectly. It's got "only" 8GB of memory IIRC, but that's more than enough to suit my needs. It's inexpensive, it weighs and is a similar size to the iPod Nano, but with a seriously sexy look, and nice, responsive touch screen. Simple operation, access to the full filesystem on the device, and best yet... It's always worked instantly on plugging in with Ubuntu Linux for me.

It doesn't require a specific program to put your music on it, you can use it like a USB drive, storing whatever data you want on it, even if the device itself can't use the file, it has a customisable interface, can play high-quality video, go pretty damn loud, AND has full advanced audio settings, you name it.